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Messages - chellyar
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176
« on: June 27, 2007, 03:09 »
It is really odd, sitting on the fence.
But I agree that it is the lack of active moderation that has lead to the state of the SS forums. I have been involved with running some busy forums in the past, and ran a very busy multi line dial-up BBS in the early 90's. There is a fine line between censorship and moderation IMHO.
Interesting to see on 'that' thread there were some posts from Rinder that disappeared, I think the admins are trying to 'keep it clean' without appearing to censor it too much.
Best we all sit on the fence and wait to see what happens, hopefully the SS admins will start to gently moderate their forums, as it appears they are doing with 'that' thread, and bring it back into line. (There have been some posts to the thread disappear after I read them.)
When I first started the Microstock game the SS forums were the most helpful and active across the sites, but now it's got out of hand I don't take part.
Just to stroke Leaf's ego a little, I think he is doing a great job of keeping things on the straight and narrow here, three cheers for Leaf.. :-).
Cheers, Me.
177
« on: June 25, 2007, 06:47 »
Download and view the attached images at 10x the size. No tricks here, I created a white jpeg 150x150 pixels, with some gray diagonal lines on it.. 1.jpg is at 100% (no compression). 2.jpg is at 50% setting in gimp (6 in PS?). You'll see when you zoom in the 2.jpg shows 'noise' as well as the detail 'clumps' on the lines. This is because jpeg replaces like chunks of data with either a solid lump of one color, or a gradient between two colors that were similar. For the 'blocks' of white in between the gray bits it replaces them gradients approximating the gray to white transition present near the gray line. That's a very rough idea of what it does of course, as the jpeg algorithm is actually very complex, but you can see the result... Have a play in PS with your own images.. Anyway, for stock the same old rules apply... Shoot in best quality jpeg or raw at a low ISO (Let's not start the raw vs jpeg thing all over!) save partially edited files as uncompressed files (native ps or GIMP format, tif if you really must), and save the jpeg at 100% or 12 (  ) in PS.
178
« on: June 25, 2007, 06:40 »
speaking with my electrical design/engineering hat on....
Yes, theoretically you could fit any 1.6x sensor to the body of your 300D.
CCD/CMOS sensors are relatively simple to interface to, and the specs for the kodak chips are available, with application notes that would allow you to get the analogue RGB mosaic values off the chip (the 'raw' data, more raw that raw format...)
But, and here's the pinch. What on earth do you do with the after that? The firmware and graphics chipset in your camera does the de-mosaic, color correction, sharpening, contrast and toning.. And is written specifically for the sensor living in the camera.
This is where the cool stuff happens. The ASIC chips (Digic etc) that do the conversion from the analogue photodiode voltages to raw digital data take thousands of hours and millions of dollars to develop. It's beyond the average large company to do this, let or loan an enthusiast...
I'm pretty sure I could build something to get the data off one of their sensors. But it would require a large circuit board, larger than the camera, and would probably take many seconds to convert one frame to usable data.
179
« on: June 25, 2007, 06:18 »
Chellyar, this was a very interesting example. I am used to seeing compression as an edge effect or as a problem with gradients, more or less as you explained.
The type noise you showed, created by compression, do you think it could be mistakenly taken as the problem in Cricket's case?
Regards,
Adelaide
Possibly... jpeg works by looking for similar pixel colors nearby, and 'grouping' like pixels together into geometric (square/rectangle) shapes. The result of that where you have large smooth areas is loss of gradations, which we're all familiar with, you can see it in the lens example in the larger black smooth curved area. Less obvious is what this does to fine details.. The 'clumps' of like pixels are smaller, so the effect may look like 2 or more pixel 'spots' that are grouped together. In the example of the flower where you would have subtle detail like the veins of the petal, the result would be similar to the metal edge in my example, you'd get 'noise' appearing between the detail lines.. Remembering that the detail doesn't have to be as obvious as the metal edge for the jpeg compression to mess it up.. The subtle change in tone in the flower texture might as well be the white/silver transition on the lower for all jpeg cares.. I'm sure I can create an example... Please hold.. 
180
« on: June 24, 2007, 16:37 »
Two images for ya..
They are 100% crops out of a stock image of an old Medium Format camera..
The smooth looking one is a high quality jpeg. The other is at setting 10 out of 100 in the gimp, which I suppose is the same as 1 or 2 in PS..
The smooth area of gradation around the inside of the lens no longer has smooth gradations, a the edges of the lines are effected by 'jaggies' The smooth gray metal edge has developed a whole lot of 'noise'..
Does that help?
181
« on: June 24, 2007, 16:31 »
Best way to understand compression artifacts would be to create some really bad ones deliberately to look at... Please hold.
182
« on: June 24, 2007, 05:10 »
Just finished adding that image...
(I was editing the image when I posted the last reply, I came looking here to see if anyone else had vented about it...)
It's a cool interface for the job, works really well..
I'm still concerned for all the old images I'd selected things like 'outside' and 'Daytime' for as well as their primary classifications... Are they now only under 'outside' 'daytime' 'natural light' ? Hmmmm. Will report back on that one.
183
« on: June 24, 2007, 05:06 »
Just went to upload my first image for a while, and my first reaction was 'What the f?' I've not looked at any existing images, but this probably makes a mockery of all the effort people will have put in with the complex system that we worked with before. I've got that 'here we go again' feeling... I've not finished disambiguating my files yet, and I've got a small port. (And I'm lazy). Do I have go go back again and check them all? Hmmmm.
184
« on: June 23, 2007, 00:44 »
Photosig has "taught" me to spend a lot of time post processing for contrast, saturation and sharpness that isn't necessary for stock. From what you and others have said the less processing the better when doing stock photography.
I have a personal opinion that its not the truth. Just looking at top sellers at any site you will notice that post processing is important part of the game.
I'd have to agree, post processing is very important, and quite a few of the top selling images that are not vectors have thumbnails that 'pop' out of a lineup of similar search hits.. Not that I can talk, I'll do as little as possible! :-). Edit: That is, I do as little as possible with microstock... For commercial commission work I might spent an hour per image making it just right. I spend more time editing sports photos for the paper than I do most stock, and it's being printed using a 100lpi screen on newsprint, which hides most sins! I imagine someone like andresr will concur, you need to put the time in to have the image 'perfect' for microstock if you want better than average sales.
185
« on: June 22, 2007, 02:03 »
This past week?
0 hours, unless you count the time I spent reading the forums here or on the bun-fights over at the SS forums. :-).
Normally I'd probably only spend 2-3 hours a week on microstock, not including forums... And I average about $35/week. $17.5/hour with a fairly non-specific and average quality (IMHO) portfolio.
Every now and then I get keen and actually take some new photos for stock (not often) and I might spend 20 or so hours that week keywording, editing etc.
It's a hobby for me... I'm at the opposite end of the commitment scale from andresr I suppose, although I do make good money freelancing for a paper, and doing team sport photos, portraits etc, but few of the images from there are any good for stock... And my own personal interest photos are a little too 'arty' for stock. :-).
Which reminds me, I've got some more stuff I should upload... nah, next week.
186
« on: June 17, 2007, 15:57 »
Good-o, just curious, as this is the first payout from StockXpert for me, so wasn't sure what to expect...
Cheers, Me.
187
« on: June 17, 2007, 05:41 »
Anyone got any experiences with slow payouts from StockXpert? Did a request back on the 11th, and just realised it's not come through. It shows as pending on the site, but my balance has not gone down.. Just curious, we're not talking high finance here... 
188
« on: June 17, 2007, 05:37 »
It all sorta works for me, but it's unbearably slow to do somethings (Show details of an image is currently hung)...
There seems to be a lot of work done on the interface though, there were some odd html issues with the V1 interface, and they are all gone...
Seems to me to be a strange way to upgrade it, all in one hit, an 'incremental' process like IS have used would have been better, but then it's not my site....
189
« on: June 02, 2007, 07:13 »
50k's south of CHCH, just out of Leeston... 10Gb Cap, $39/month... With Xtra. I rarely get close to the 10Gb, but then I don't surf all that much... 8Mb/s? That'd be nice. Is that right across the UK, or just in the major centers? Telecom had been forced to un-bundle the local loop, which means that other providers now have access to the 'last mile' copper cables... it's opened up a bit of competition, and telstra have laid their own fibre and last mile in some areas. CHCH is a much nicer city to live in, but there's more oppertunity for employment in AKL if you can put up with the traffic issues, and cost of living up there... Although if you're used to London traffic you'll wonder where all the cars have gone!
190
« on: June 02, 2007, 02:46 »
I dunno CJ, I'm in the middle of nowhere, and I get 1Mb/s down at time, and a solild 256k up.. It's not startling but OK. I most cities you can get symetrical DSL from Telstra now, which is 2Mb/s each way I believe..
What part of NZ you coming back to?
191
« on: May 28, 2007, 20:22 »
'Urro,
I've shot a few some large panos for customers, recently using digital SLR and MF film in the past. Always used manual settings for focus and exposure.
For exposure I take some spot meter readings (external meter, not the camera) of the brigher areas in the intended 'image', and then go down 2.5 stops from the average of those. For focus I use hyperfocal distance as per Sharply's comments.
I do about a 33% overlap, based on Mk1.0 eyeball measurement through the viewfinder, and I've got a spirit level in my tripod head with an offset plate to get the point of rotation at the optical center of the lens, rather than the film plane, which fixes some of the weird overlap issues..
I stitch them using Hugin, which is a front end for panorama tools. In the film jobs I used to get them drum scanned and muck around in Photoshop or Gimp (Depending on my mood) lining them up and creating layer masks to blend them together.
Cheers, Me.
192
« on: May 28, 2007, 14:50 »
Modern Airport Xray machines wont harm the unit, although I suppose if you left it to simmer in the Xray for an hour or two it would probably erase the data.
Dunno about the second question, depends on whether it creates a new folder for each download session. Changing the date on your camera will not help, as that dosn't effect the file names.
193
« on: May 24, 2007, 02:09 »
Tibet? Oh man... I'm not reading any more of this thread!
194
« on: May 23, 2007, 03:20 »
Hmmmmm.  No fair... But, there is a small glimmer of hope, I am going on an overnight trip with the local camera club in a couple of weeks, but I'm taking my 3.5y old daughter, and acting as a tutor, so although It'll be a photography trip I can see my camera staying snug and warm in the bag for most of it. I'm also secretary, so I can see some of my time going to administrivia as well... Hmmmm. A couple of weekends ago I took my first 'for the sake of it' photo in ages while taking a break between sports events. It was very cathartic to not thing about what the editors would like, or what a customer wants. Just studying light and shadow, enjoying the process... Ahhhhh. Later in the year when things slow down a bit at work, and the sports seasons crossover from winter to summer again I've got to take some time out to just shutterbug, I think I'm getting burnt out... Enjoy your trips.... Swines.
195
« on: May 22, 2007, 04:43 »
I just thought I say that I'm jealous....
Not of the camera purchase, I've got enough cameras, I'm jealous of you having the ability to have a 'photography vacation'...
I have 'photography moments', in between everything else I seem to be doing lately. :-).
197
« on: May 19, 2007, 17:32 »
Nice looking site.... I use a blower, and when that dosn't work I use photosol sensor swabs + eclipse... Because I shoot wide open or close to it 99% of the time (F/2.8-F/4) I don't tend to have to clean that often, although when I do the sensor is looking like a riverbed. Particularly in summer when I cover a few motorsport events on dusty dirt circuits, and off-road events..
198
« on: May 19, 2007, 06:01 »
Thanks for that Jill, I should read all of the newsletter, might miss something! hatman12, some of your egg shots are cool. 
199
« on: May 19, 2007, 02:37 »
Congrats... Now can someone forward me a copy of the newsletter so I can read it again, I deleted it without going to any of the links this morning.
200
« on: May 18, 2007, 16:47 »
Looks interesting, for another take on selling images, I wonder how they market it if you get your own domain name? (Only read the home page, 
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